"Exactly—she remains the trusted employee with whose painful position you sympathize. It won’t be difficult, for you won’t see much of her. You’ll naturally stay here in town till Bébita is found. What I intend to do with her is to send her back to Grasslands with a competent jailer—" he paused and pointed where Molly sat, silent and almost forgotten. For a moment the Janneys eyed her, questioning and dubious, then Mrs. Janney voiced their mutual thought: "Is Mrs. Babbitts, alone, a sufficient guard?" The lawyer smiled. "Quite. Miss Maitland doesn’t want to run away. She knows too much for that. No position could be better for our purpose than to leave her—apparently unsuspected—alone in that big house. She will be confident, possibly take chances." He turned on Molly, glowering at her from under his overhanging brows. "The safest and quickest means of communication with Grasslands, when the family is in town and the servants ignorant of the situation, would be the telephone." That ended the conference. Mrs. Janney went to get Suzanne and Molly received her final instructions. She was to return to Grasslands with Miss Maitland, Ferguson could take them in his motor. She was to sit in the back seat with the lady and casually drop the information that she had come to town in answer to a wire from the Whitney office. She might have seen suspicious characters lurking about the grounds or in the woods. On no account was she to let her companion guess that Price was suspected, and any remarks which might place the young woman more completely at her ease, allay all sense of danger, would be valuable. They left the room and went into the entrance hall where Esther, and presently Mrs. Janney, joined them. Whitney struck the note of a reassuring friendliness in his manner to the girl, and the old people, rather reservedly chimed in. She seemed grateful, thanked them, reiterating her distress. In the elevator, going down, Molly noticed that she fell into a staring abstraction, starting nervously as the iron gate swung back at the ground floor. Ferguson, waiting on the curb, saw them as they emerged from the doorway. His eyes leaped at the girl, and, as she crossed the sidewalk, were riveted on her. Their expression was plain, yearning and passion no longer disguised. If she saw the look she gave no sign, nodded to him, and, leaving Molly to explain, climbed into the back seat and sunk in a corner. Though the afternoon was hot she picked up the cloak lying on the floor and drew it round her shoulders. The drive home was very silent. Molly gave the prescribed reasons for her presence and heard them answered with the brief comments of inattention. She also touched on the other matters and found her companion so unresponsive that she desisted. It was evident that Esther Maitland wanted to be left to her own thoughts. Huddled in the cloak, her eyes fixed on the road in front, she sat as silent and enigmatic as a sphinx.